Joseph R. Biden Jr. Quotes

The National Security Council's real role is to coordinate the various activities of the government of the United States in the furtherance of American foreign policy.

I'm a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.

I'm sorry that I can't snap my fingers and undo 50 years of bad American foreign policy.

There are legitimate, even powerful arguments, to be made against the Bush administration's foreign policy. But those arguments are complicated, hard to explain, and, in the end, not all that sensational.

People tend to leave foreign affairs to governments because they think the leaders of government have all the information and know better.

People think that it only takes an American decision to solve this or that problem [in foreign affairs].

It's very liberating for me to realize that I don't have to step up to the plate with a plot that involves the U.N. Security Council.

This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim.

American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.

I didn't serve on a committee that dealt with foreign policy.

The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.

Let me remind you all that the first task of American foreign policy is to reduce threats to the United States.

I would never play any role in anything that involves the United Nations for obvious reasons.

There is no such thing as the United Nations.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

If governments do not want to work with the U.N. and the international organizations, there is a limit to what you can do. And there is also a limit to patience.

Congress cannot—nor should it—run foreign policy on a day-to-day basis. That is a truism.

The Constitution is an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.

Oh dear. Oh dear. Why do all these old gentlemen feel so confident that they understand foreign affairs.

Congress cannot and should not run foreign policy.

When did the American people decide that U. S. foreign policy should be conducted through the United Nations.

You cannot have individual foreign policy. You cannot have celebrity foreign policy.

When America rejected the League, she had deliberately chosen to rest solely upon treaties with the sanction of public opinion alone…

[Sanctions] make us feel like a player in foreign policy where our powers tend to be more limited …. We’re less patient with diplomacy.

The question of when you intervene is probably the toughest question of American foreign policy.